


Where Does a Circle Begin

by JiM



Category: Peter Pan (2003), Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Gen, Post Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JiM/pseuds/JiM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young new man with one hand wakes up on a strange shore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Does a Circle Begin

He woke on the beach with no memory of who he was.  There was salt crusting his skin and sand ground into his hair and in the creases of his breeches and torn shirt.  _Marooned_ , floated through his mind, but the word brought him no unease and he soon forgot it.  The water that had been lapping at his ankles had retreated farther down the strand and he was caught by the sight of the sun rising from the sea.  The beauty made him catch his breath and the brightness brought tears to his stinging eyes and he knew that he had never before simply sat and watched it come up. 

 

The wide, full lips of the sun reminded him that his own were painfully dry and cracked with salt.  He stood carefully, stiffly and looked up and down the beach hoping for a stream flowing out of the thick jungle behind him.  Not ten steps away from his waking was a rill of cool, clear water and he went full length in the sand to kiss the shallow trickle.  He drank and drank and thought he felt the sun smiling down upon him as he did.  The water was no more than a handbreadth deep and he could barely cup it and bring a handful to his face to wash away the salt.  After the worst of his thirst was quenched, he stood again.

 

The sun was now hot on his shoulders and face.  The thick jungle whispered invitingly and he had a sudden thought, too thin to even be called a memory.  The jungle was cool and deep and there were pools of water, waterfalls and running streams where he could wash the sand from his clothing and the salt from his skin.  He started to walk upstream and noticed that he wore only one shoe.  The buckle was tarnished and the leather shrunken, so he took it off and let it drop on the sand.  The torn hose followed and he splashed inland with the cool kiss of water trickling around his ankles.

 

Once within the undergrowth, he could no longer hear the murmur of the sea upon the sand.  Now there was a palette of noises; birdsong and unseen creatures calling, leaves whispering together and the slow drip of last night's rainwater from the hanging moss above him.  The rill grew deeper as he went inward and it was nearly at his thighs when he came to the pool.  At one end, there was a slender white waterfall dropping into the pool from a cliff far overhead.  At his end, there was a shoulder of firm golden sand forming a lip over which the pool eventually poured to chase its way to the sea from which he'd come.

 

He climbed out and stood upon the sand, the warmth an equal pleasure to the cool water. He pulled the damp, crusty clothing off, dropping the rags of the shirt on the sand and the breeches on top of them.  The pool was cool, green and deep and he floundered for a moment before his body recalled that it could swim, even if he could remember no single incident in which he could.  His hair streamed out behind him when he dove down, finally free of salt and sand and any tie or … _hat_ , he recalled.  He had worn a velvet hat, _velvet the color of drying blood at sunset_.  But it was difficult to know what color that might be, as he couldn't recall a sunset in this place.  He thought he might prefer the gold of the sand or the leaf green water in which he swam, or even the peach and blue of the sunrise he had seen.  It didn't matter – the hat was gone.  Lost…?  But his memory would go no further than that and even the idea of the hat faded from his mind as he broke the surface and took a huge breath of sweet air.  The scent of the water swam in his brain and he drank deeply again to banish the memory of salty bitterness in his mouth.

 

He splashed his way back to shore, content to sit upon the golden sand on the rags of his shirt, his thirst quenched, his itching skin soothed, his heat cooled.  The water on his skin dried gently in the golden-tinted shadows beside the pool.  In wake of that, he felt a certain emptiness that was not thirst.  When he turned to look at the jungle, he saw the boy.  The boy was sitting in a tree, watching him and eating an apple.

 

Hunger.  The boy reminded him that he was hungry.  Another memory wisp flitted across his brain, then hid in the shadows and he shook it away.  The boy was still watching.  Remembering the face of the sun, he tried a smile.  The boy smiled back, very white teeth in a golden face, then tossed him an apple.  When he reached out to catch the apple in his hands, he felt his first pain.  He had only one hand – the other ended in a clumsy stump above his wrist.  How had he not noticed before? He stared at the lumps of scarring and the apple thumped down into the sand next to him.

 

There was no memory in him of what had happened to the hand.  When he shook his head, the shadows teemed and gibbered for a moment, then were gone again.  There was no pain, just a lack now.  His glance caught the apple again, its red and green skin gleaming against the yellow sand in which it rested.  He could smell its sweetness; his mouth remembered the tartness that waited just beneath the skin for him. He caught it up and bit into it, gasping when the juice seemed to explode across his tongue.  He devoured it and it was gone in four bites, seeds and core swallowed happily. 

 

He was still hungry.

 

The boy in the tree laughed, his laughter belonging more to the birdsong and the waterfall.  When the man looked up, wanting to mimic that noise, another red apple thumped to the ground beside him.  Then the boy, who had not been sitting in the tree at all, swept down and landed to stand easily before him.  There was another apple in his hand, this one yellow, and the juice ran down his chin as he bit into it.  Bright green eyes invited the man to eat the forgotten fruit, so he did, the sweet flavor seeming to be more scent and sound than merely taste.

 

"What happened to your hand?" the boy asked.  His voice, like his laughter, belonged here in this jungle, owing more to the creatures calling than to anything the man could call upon.

 

"I don't know.  I… lost it.  It’s gone."  His voice sounded rusty, salted and withered like that one ridiculous shoe he had thrown away.

 

"I could help you look for it," the boy offered, taking another bite of the apple.

 

The man smiled up at him, but somehow knew it was a sad look.  "It's gone," he explained.

 

"Oh.  What's your name?"

 

Again, the faint flicker of memory, of voices shouting his name, of men screaming his name, of his name written with flourish and blood and spittle.  Then, nothing but the sound of the waterfall and the sound of the golden boy swallowing another bite.  The man shook his head, but this loss caused no pain.

 

"You lost that, too?" the boy said with a faint smile, finishing his apple.  "I'm Peter."

 

"Do you live here, Peter?"

 

"Of course," the boy looked surprised.  "It's mine."

 

"Where are we?"

 

"Neverland," Peter said crossing his legs and collapsing gracefully to sit in front of the man.

 

"It's nice."

 

Peter grinned, then asked, "Do you know any stories?"

 

The man opened his mouth to say "No."  Instead, what came out was,

 

"Once upon a time…"

 

Stories flowed from his lips and he had no idea of their provenance.  Only that, as soon as his tongue slowed and he had a sip of water, the shadows in his head rustled and produced another tale.  Pirates, desperadoes, quests and hopeless causes, evil kings and common-born heroes all whined and begged behind his eyes, demanding to be set free in Peter's eyes. 

 

Sometimes they fought the more desperate battles together, fencing with crooked sticks.  The man laughed aloud even as he complained that Peter cheated, bouncing high overhead and hanging there, a sly grin on his lips as he thwapped his slower, taller companion on the back of the head with his twig.

 

The sun sank lower, the breeze became cooler and still the words flowed.  They lay on the sand bank and soaked in the last of the warmth beside the pool.  "… and the Queen laid the flat of her sword upon his shoulder and he became her sworn knight, to protect and defend her all of his days.  The end."  The words slipped out into the twilight and there were no more behind them.  The man fell silent.

 

The boy sighed happily.  "That was a good one.  Tell me another?"

 

But there were no others.  He fixed his eyes on the pale stars just beginning to peek out above them.  This latest lack pained him.

 

His silence made the boy sit up.  "Oh.  It's time to go, isn't it?"  Peter got to his feet.

 

"Will you come here again tomorrow?"

 

The boy shrugged carelessly.  "I don't know.  I'm not often on this side of the island."  He took a few steps into the deepening dusk and the man sadly watched him go.

 

"Aren't you coming?"

 

It was dawn all over again.  The brightness was inside him this time, but it was there, warm and smiling as the sun had been.  He got up and took the hand Peter stretched out to him and let himself be pulled into the darkening jungle without a thought.  They ran, whooping and laughing, as their feet  pounded down the dirt paths and over mossy logs and through cool puddles and squelching mud.

 

He slept that night on a pile of moss and pine needles heaped beside Peter's pallet, tucked within the roots of an enormously ancient tree.  He dreamed of nothing, although he woke once or twice in the night to watch the flames of their tiny fire and to whisper the name Peter had given him over and over as a lullaby until he slept again.

 

 _James_.


End file.
